1941-1950

This all-woman production is set in provincial France in the early 1930’s. Two young, country sisters enter domestic service in the bourgeois household of a penurious widow and her homely daughter. Neither pair speaks to the other: two sets of women separated and confined by social convention, personality, and the house itself. The relationship of the sisters slowly evolves into obsession, brought about by isolation and by emotions left from childhood. Trapped in a garret room, the sisters’ violent downstairs-upstairs collision with Madame Danzard and the lumpy Isabelle seems certainRead More »

During World War I, underage student Francois Jaubert meets and falls in love with Marthe Grangier, who is engaged to Jacques, a soldier at the Front. Though Francois pursues her ardently, they become separated and she marries Jacques. But when Marthe and Francois meet again, their mutual feelings prove stronger than ever, and they begin an extramarital affair…regardless of potentially tragic consequences. Written by Rod CrawfordRead More »

Synopsis:
Peppino, a fishmonger on Campo de’ Fiori, a famous Roman marketplace, works alongside Elide, a greengrocer, who has a soft spot for him, despite the fact they argue all day long… But neither Peppino, nor his friend Aurelio, the barber, are interested in getting married. Until he meets the beautiful Elsa…Read More »

Based on Noël Coward’s play “Still Life,” Brief Encounter is a romantic, bittersweet drama about two married people who meet by chance in a London railway station and carry on an intense love affair. Sentimental yet down-to-earth and set in pre-World War II England, the film follows British housewife Laura Jesson (Celia Johnson), who is on her way home, but catches a cinder in her eye. By chance, she meets Dr. Alec Harvey (Trevor Howard), who removes it for her. The two talk for a few minutes and strike immediate sparks, but they end up catching different trains. However, both return to the station once a week to meet and, as the film progresses, they grow closer, sharing stories, hopes, and fears about their lives, marriages, and children. Read More »

Quote:
Serbian national Irena Dubrovna, a fashion sketch artist, has recently arrived in New York for work. The first person who she makes a personal connection with there is marine engineer Oliver Reed. The two fall in love and get married despite Irena’s reservations, not about Oliver but about herself. She has always felt different than other people, but has never been sure why. She lives close to the zoo, and unlike many of her neighbors is comforted by the sounds of the big cats emanating from the zoo. And although many see it purely as an old wives’ tale, she believes the story from her village of ancient residents being driven into witchcraft and evil doing, those who managed to survive by escaping into the mountains. After seeing her emotional pain, Oliver arranges for her to see a psychiatrist to understand why she believes what she does. In therapy, Dr. Judd, the psychiatrist, learns that she also believes, out of that villagers’ tale, that she has descended from this evil.Read More »

One of the better films of Edgar Neville, and one that should be more well-known, “La vida en un hilo” tells the now classic story of a woman that, in a certain time of her life, takes a decision that defines the rest of her fate completely, and at the same time we see the what-ifs of the other decision. What makes this movie different from Sliding Doors is that the what-if is told by a fortune-teller that our main star meets in a train.Read More »

Quote:
“All About Eve” is a literate, adult film of the calibre that will do big league, big town business. In addition it has all the elements for the general runs.

The whyfore of the producer’s insistence for “scheduled performances” becomes obvious as the story unfolds from its banquet scene that honors a new Broadway legit great and the flashbacks which deal with the brittle, hard-bitten and frequently bitter saga that tells us “All About Eve.”

Anne Baxter, in the title role, is the radiant newcomer who has attained the thespic heights. And as she mounts the podium to receive the supreme accolade, the intimates who figured in her breathless success story project their own vignettes on what made this hammy glammy run.Read More »

The most incendiary of Nazi Germany’s anti-British films, and one of the most audaciously cynical movies ever made. Conceived by Joseph Goebbels’ Propaganda Ministry as a propagandistic blockbuster, this lavish production leaves no stone unturned in its bitter indictment of Great Britain, which at the time (early 1941) stood alone as Germany’s wartime foe. In its historical re-enactment of the Second Boer War, Ohm Krüger depicts Britain as a relentlessly aggressive power, hell-bent on world domination; the film’s remarkable set pieces feature a scotch-swilling Queen Victoria, a cruelly conniving Cecil Rhodes and a Winston Churchill look-alike who presides over a murderous concentration camp. On the Boer side stands saintly “Uncle” Krüger, portrayed as a model of simple dignity and unerring moral right by one of the world cinema’s greatest actors, Emil Jannings. Read More »

Quote:
With La Terra trema, Luchino Visconti shows an extraordinary concern and sympathy with the plight of ordinary Sicilian fisher folk. Coming from a privileged aristocratic background, Visconti was so appalled by what the fascists had done to his country that he took up with left-wing politics and Marxist ideology. Whilst this political awareness does make its way into La Terra trema, what is far more striking is Visconti’s genuine compassion for the people he is filming. He conveys their sense of pride and nobility, as well as their extreme hardship and inability to make a better lot for themselves. Perhaps it is the fact that Visconti came from such a totally different world that allows him to engage so forcefully with his subject, to draw out every scintilla of poignancy, not as a complacent distant voyeur, but as someone who is profoundly moved by what he is seeing around him.Read More »